Maiden, Mother, and Crone
by AlyssaFish
Summary: Studies of Aerith, inspired by prompts from the 20 Hearbeats livejournal community. This is the way the world will end, and these are the people who will live on in the night. Rating may change with later chapters.
1. 01 Apathy

The prompts are from the 20 Heartbeats Livejournal community: .com/20_heartbeats/

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01. Absent _[what do i do when you're not here]_

[ apathy ]

Darkness was the stuff of nightmares. Ugly, deep, and raw patches of fog that grasped and trapped shrouded the horrible things it did to the ones writhing inside. That was dismissible, though, because it was only supposed to stay in your head.

Aerith couldn't stop shaking. She sat on the hard, gritty floor, holding her knees close to her chest. Her skin shivered with goose bumps and her bones ached from the tremors running through her. Long, warm burns spread across her grimy skin like she had been out baking in the sun too long. Inside, she was trembling like a violent ghost was trying to rip her body apart. Her head felt swollen with bad things that were leftover from the rotten dreams in her head. She had woken up and still they didn't go away.

The darkness was everywhere. It saturated the walls and crawled up her arms like little ants. She slapped her limbs, shook out her skirt and rubbed furiously at her hair, but she could still feel it, climbing up her back and reaching for her heart. She hid her face behind her arms and squeezed her eyes shut, counting each and every beat of her pulse to make sure it was still there. The darkness was waiting and it would swallow her alive. She would be damned forever in all those hellish nights spent sweating and screaming.

"Mother?" She yelled to someone, her voice breaking from her dry, ashen throat. She wasn't sure who was left to yell to. She couldn't feel their world anymore. The voice of the planet was dead. Her chest clenched around that empty, gaping hole that it left. She had never felt so alone. Even when no one else would so much as give her the time of day, the world would speak. It told her things no one else knew. It was wide and impossible to comprehend, making her feel no bigger than a speck of dust in its veins, but when she had no friends it gave her ones to talk to. Even those were gone now. All she had now were those secrets spinning around in her empty head.

"Mother."

No one answered.

Outside the cold, dark emptiness of the not-space pressed against the little ship like a vacuum. She tried not to think about how there were only so many inches worth of metal and sky-candy keeping her from the endless abyss. She could feel the engine rumbling reassuring somewhere below, like the ship had its own heartbeat. She could feel the heat it generated through the walls, the warmth making her dress stick to her body. Small beads of sweat ran down her face and limbs like those little dark claws trying to reach through her flesh.

"Don't think about it," she told her knees, rocking back and forth. The gum walls creaked, the engine hissed and she twitched. Her face grew so hot she thought she would burst.

"Mo-_ther_?"

"I SAID NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

A scream pierced through the hall, rocking Aerith from her concentration. A little girl they'd grabbed at the last second was throwing a fit in the cockpit. Aerith knew she'd seen the girl running wild on the streets before they had been destroyed. The pilot was trying to figure out how to communicate with her.

Aerith turned her head away, like that could block out the anguished wails. She had to decide if they were better or worse that listening to her own body rip away from its consciousness. She had one soul for company in the little space and her first look at him and nearly caused her to jump out of her skin. All she noticed at first was the dirt, the soot, and the blood. There was so much blood. It oozed over his face, shiny and red, covering his nose and cheeks, running into his mouth and rolling down the sides of his jaws to seep into his neck and what was left of the torn, gray t-shirt. He didn't even seem to be human. He wouldn't live for much longer.

"Are you okay?" she asked, her voice coming out a little stranger than she'd planned, like it wasn't even hers.

The person didn't say anything.

"You're bleeding," she said unnecessarily.

Two eyes, cloudy and gray, suddenly popped up. She didn't think she could ever be so terrified of eyes in her life. A rough sound like a cough rolled in his throat, and then he managed to croak something out.

"…go…away…" he shuddered, barely managing to wheeze enough breath. "…j-just…let…me…_die_…"

It was a sound of such despair, mournful and hypnotic, that Aerith couldn't help but consider taking a loose gummi block and actually smashing it against his skull. She shuddered at herself. She stood up, shaking hands rubbing furiously at her gooseflesh and looking down at the pathetic lump bleeding and gasping in front of her. Angry screams continued to resonate behind her. She could smell the smoke and bodies of the handful of other people stuck with her on that boat.

_Mother?_

There was no answer. There was only a painful, panging loneliness that tore at her heart. Slowly, convinced she was in a dream, Aerith turned around and walked away from him. She traveled deeper into the ship and found a porthole. She clutched at the metal frame and squared her jaw as she looked into the darkness pressing against the ship.

Something was wrong. There was something she had forgotten.

One by one, stars flickered into existence as her eyes got used to watching them pass by. They circled and spun as the ship tumbled through space, bringing them far, far away from the disaster that was their home.

She couldn't remember what it was that they were running from. In the jumble of mess and shape there was something she'd left behind.

Aerith dug her fingers into her hair and ground her teeth. What was it, what was it. She'd never felt like this before in her life. Inside, she burned and writhed with the dark until she thought she was going to be sick.

"MOTHER!"

She tore at her hair and screamed. She couldn't remember ever feeling anything else but this. This terror of things that no one could fight, terrified of her own body, the unfamiliarity of absolutely everything around her. She was alone, just her and these strange people she neither knew nor cared about, spinning through nothing, going nowhere. Everything she had known, the house she'd lived in, the streets she'd played in, the colors and that deep, ancient rhythm that had flowed through her veins whenever she breathed were gone.

It was like all of that had been a dream, and now she was waking up.


	2. 02 Monsters

02. Breath; Footfall _[the only sound in the world]_

[ monsters ]

_Tick…tick…tick…_

In the daylight, the Red Room might have looked comfortable and inviting. Aerith had nothing against the color red. She liked it. Traverse Town never had a day, though. It didn't exist. There was lamplight, which was fine, although it did cast heavy shadows. They made the red accents black and dark like drying blood.

Everything of late tended to make her think of blood. She had seen quite a bit of it in the past couple days. Being so macabre all the time was beginning to make her feel sick, but she couldn't shake the greasy visions from her eyes when she closed them.

_Sixty eight, sixty nine, seventy, seventy one, seventy two, seventy three…_

Aerith lay in bed, trying to count herself to sleep. The mattress was so large she couldn't touch both sides at once without rolling over. She was flat on her back, staring up at the canopy that cloaked the frame. The fabric swayed in the dank breeze that drifted in from the underground waterway. The smell made her want to vomit, but the air felt nice on the itching skin that kept pestering her mind awake. The burns wouldn't leave her alone. She was sure she was going to dry up, leaving behind nothing but a shriveled, burned husk of flesh.

She continued to wheeze out her breaths as if she were a corpse from the smoke that still clogged her lungs. Otherwise, the room was silent. It made her think of tombs. She imagined a man dressed in the room's red velvet curtains, imprisoned in a coffin under her bed. He would have red eyes that stared at the bottom of the lid, and long fingernails poised upon the wood.

_Skritch skritch._

Aerith stopped breathing.

_Skritch skritch._

That sound was only something she heard in her head now. It shouldn't have been so close to the window, clear and real. She couldn't even move to shove her head under her pillow. She tightened every bit of her body and lay like a plank under the covers. Maybe if she tried hard enough she could melt into the bed frame.

_Shthump shthumpshthumpshthumpdadump_

Her heart was pounding like a machine gun, letting all in the vicinity know that she was a living, fleshy thing ripe for the picking by toothy monsters with claws. No. No. No-no-no-no-no it couldn't be. Not here. Not in their safe haven.

_Skritch._

It had followed them. Snuck onto the ship, hiding in a corpse? Who had lost their heart? Was it the young man in the other room? He was much too weak to fend off the darkness, she knew it. Yuffie wouldn't have, would she? She was so _loud_ and every inch of her was coiled to spring and fight. Please let it not be someone she knew, come back from the dead to guilt her out of living.

The night continued to breathe like murder.

She felt as insignificant as a rag in a gutter. Utterly and hopelessly defenseless. Her dry lips were too stiff and had long forgotten the spells that had kept her safe once upon a life. She wondered if she'd even be able to scream when the claws finally found her and began to rip her apart like tissue paper. Why was she still so alive and aware of them scratching at the window, creeping under the bed, hanging from the unseen corners, staring at her with big, gaping eyes.

Heavy footsteps hit the floorboards and sent the shadows scattering. Aerith blinked her way out of her thoughts as she heard through the thin walls of the hotel the sound of someone walking. Something that was very human was making its way into the adjoining room. It was enough to make her feel able to carefully sink back into herself. The door between the two rooms was cracked open a bit, and when the lamp in the Green Room was turned on it cast a stream of yellow light through the opening.

There was a rustling of thick paper bags.

"Good to see you're still alive," said a voice, deep and solid. "I'm gonna have to rip that ship apart and sell the pieces to keep paying for this shit so you might as well suck it up and make some kind of effort to get better."

Aerith sat up, peeling the bed sheets from her legs. She padded barefoot across the floor, her dirty pink dress flapping around her knees, and cautiously slid in next to the doorframe.

The green room seemed much warmer with the dim lamp on the dresser illuminating the space. There was the man who was saving their lives, who smelled horrid and had a face that could frighten the life out of babies. His impossibly large hands were planted firmly on his hips and his worn face sternly watched their patient, who lay on the only bed in the room.

The pilot looked up before Aerith could make up her mind and decide if she was going to say hello or go back to bed. All they could do was to stare at each other.

His eyes were very blue.

Aerith curled her fingers nervously against the wood of the door. A heavy sigh broke from his lips.

"Christ, you look like a ghost."

Unable to breathe for a moment, Aerith pressed her finger to her wrist to see if there was still a pulse. She twisted her mouth to frown at him. He scowled back, ten times worse.

"Have you done anything for those cuts yet?" he grouched.

Aerith looked down at her limbs, dumbly, like she was just noticing the things.

The man went over to the bags on the table and took out a few colorful bottles, studying the labels. He approached her, blocking out the lamplight like a giant, and offered two of them.

"This one's aseptic for the cuts and the other's a crème that'll help the burns." Aerith took them, not knowing what else to do with her hands. "You know we have our own bathroom?"

She shook her head. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at a door on the other side of the room.

"Blue Room, right through there."

He tore his gaze from hers, leaving her a little bit colder. He turned from her to drop himself into a sturdy wooden chair and sigh, loudly. The _thump_ made the floor shake.

He smelled of fresh tobacco smoke and soap.

Aerith suddenly had the sneaking suspicion that she had scared him, creeping around the doorway like that and watching him while he was unaware. She had seen her face in the mirror, all hollowed out and smudged with bruises, and knew it didn't look exactly pretty.

"Th-thank you," Aerith croaked, her voice was cracked and swollen but it was still there, wonderfully and palpably there.

The man just grunted. He was rubbing his forehead with the tips of his rough fingers. There were deep creases furrowed into his skin and a thicket of stubble on his jaw threatening to grow into a beard. He looked as old as Aerith felt.

"Can't just leave you here," he muttered, more to himself than anything. "Not with him…you…Christ, just get back in bed, all right?"

Aerith pretended to be very interested in the bottle of burn crème and not at all aware of how glassy the captain's eyes had become. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she turned and crept back into her room. She hoped she wouldn't hear him sob.

Back in bed, the tube she took and squeezed into her hands, rubbing the cold salve over her arms and legs, massaging it into her flaking skin. When she was done, she carefully arranged herself over the covers. The wind in the room raised the few hairs that were left on her arms. She could hear him in the other room, the wood creaking under his boots as he moved about. He would be there, she realized, even if the sun wasn't. He would be there, in the other room, just a wall away, to hear her scream if the darkness took her.


End file.
